Sunday, 29 June 2008

The lies at the heart of Straw's white paper - Concluded

From the foregoing, an ordinary elector (rather than a member of the Political Class) may be forgiven for thinking that there is a crying need for political reform that de-centralises politics, that empowers and engages local democracy, that halts and even reverses the massive levels of State funding for the incumbent national parties. All the recommended courses of action in Straw's white paper do exactly the reverse.

Simon Jenkins quotes Hayek in his 'Big Bang Localism'; "Nowhere has democracy worked well without a great measure of local self government... it provides a school of political training for the people at large as much as for their future leaders". I think it's even more important than that; I think a strong local democracy is the fundamental guardian of the internal stability of the United Kingdom. The anger and frustration everywhere in the Kingdom with central Statist diktat and the snouts of the Political Class is building up a huge charge that is only partially being earthed when electors have a rare opportunity to give Labour a kicking. Yet if there were an election tomorrow at which the Conservatives won a majority in the Commons, they too would become the focus of the nation's opprobrium unless they made moves immediately to rebalance our democracy.

I am an enemy to civil disorder and violent change. Business, trade, economy and prosperity are flowers that blossom where there is confidence in the rule of law in a benign and stable political democracy. The internal stability of the Kingdom is the best guarantee for the welfare of the British people. Political change must come, but I would rather it came as part of a peaceful and orderly transition than through chaos, anarchy and conflict. Straw's white paper is a desperate effort from a national political party reaching the end of its natural life as it is currently constituted to cling to its historical identity; Cameron was right to end the tri-lateral talks, for whatever his actual motives the result is in the national interest.

We face the prospect of a government that retains enough of a parliamentary majority to push through a Bill based on this white paper, and under Brown's leadership I fear they may do so. An entrenched Political Class increasing subventing tax funds for its members, the lines blurred between State parties, the executive, a politicised civil service, the legislature and even parts of the judiciary and all their by-blows, liggers and cling-ons with the mass of the electorate alienated and marginalised from political democracy heralds the prospect of conflict and civil disorder.

Unfortunately, as notes, an incoming "Conservative" administration has committed to the introduction of equal pay audits. Get used to it and don't fool yourself: a Cameron government will mean a return to the post-war consensus (which ended in 1979) where Conservative administrations presided over slow-motion socialism, tinkering at the edges but never trying to tackle the real problems.

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